The Supreme Court Never Meant For Roe V. Wade To Become A Symbol Of Women's Rights

When the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 with its historic Roe v. Wade decision, it wasn’t concerned with protecting women’s rights so much as it wanted to protect doctors.Or so argues longtime Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse in an op-ed for The New York Times.

“[T]o the justices who decided the case, Roe v. Wade really was about abortion, nothing more or less,” Greenhouse wrote. “To read the actual opinion, as almost no one ever does, is to understand that the seven middle-aged to elderly men in the majority certainly didn’t think they were making a statement about women’s rights: women and their voices are nearly absent from the opinion.”